Hello, I heard about this RFC (request for "comments?") through the chatlogger. http://chatlogs.musicbrainz.org/musicbrainz/2010/2010-11/2010-11-28.html#T00-33-10-62241
To start with, I would like to say that, even if Hepburn was created with the english readers in mind, I would agree any romanisation convention. Whether it is Hepburn or something more systematic or "official" like ISO 3602 Strict. I would agree any of the romanisation but I don't agree with the choice of adding english title case to romanisation that will be eventually chosen. We should not insert rules coming from foreign language (english capitalisation) into rominased japanese. We are making a ROMANISATION guideline, not a englicisation nor a translation guideline. Japanese doesn't have the concept of capitalisation. (see http://www2.jasrac.or.jp romanisation are full-caps, they could be all-lower-caps, capitalisation would not bring any more sense). We could use all-lower case or choose, at the farther extent, the sentence style with proper nouns capped (ex : Edo, koto, Kyōto, mune, Nihonkai, hatukoi, Ōsaka, etc.). This is just how far we could go in inserting alien typographic concepts IMO. I've made a small discuss in the IRC asking for info. And the reasons I've had supporting the use of foreign caps into romanisation were (chatlogger out of order) : R1. There are no other rules. R2. The majority is using it. I am personally not convinced by either of those. R1. Then why introducing alien elements? R2. The majority (over the internet) is not representative of the world's diversity (internet is english biased) and more generally speaking, majority is not a logical reason. As for the examples given, I think something like jasrac is more important to follow than something like pirated mp3 websites, USA's vgmdb.net or cdjapan, which is jpn neowing's english site for instance in the matter of romanisation (romanisation is help people reading stuff in their alphabet, transcription that shouldn't add alien grammatical typographic rules or habits). Tristan (jesus2099). -- PRINCE TRISTAN … (psn:)patate12 … (latin:)TRISTANVS http://miaou.ions.fr -- View this message in context: http://musicbrainz-mailing-lists.2986109.n2.nabble.com/RFC-Capitalization-Standard-Japanese-tp5142389p5784010.html Sent from the Style discussions mailing list archive at Nabble.com. _______________________________________________ MusicBrainz-style mailing list MusicBrainz-style@lists.musicbrainz.org http://lists.musicbrainz.org/mailman/listinfo/musicbrainz-style
